On Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Janeway keeps a sculpture of a head on a shelf near her desk in her ready room.
Whose head is it?
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Sign up to join this communityOn Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Janeway keeps a sculpture of a head on a shelf near her desk in her ready room.
Whose head is it?
I think the bust might depict Odysseus.
(source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/69716881@N02/8559584513)
Probably the only time the bust is acknowledged on-screen is in Voyager: Counterpoint:
(Janeway and Inspector Kashyk are in her ready room. Kashyk is looking at Janeway's collection of artifacts and picks up the bust in question.)
KASHYK: It seems you have a long-standing obsession with exploration, Captain. I, on the other hand, have much more in common with this ancient soldier.
JANEWAY: He's from Earth's classical period. It produced some of our greatest artists as well.
So he is referred to as a "soldier" as opposed to an "artist". I would say this description fits much better to Odysseus than to Aristotle or Archimedes.
Odysseus is often depicted bearded and wearing a pileus (a kind of felt hat), so this also fits quite well.
Out of universe, I can totally see someone from the prop department putting in this little reference to Janeway's own Odyssey.
In universe it might be a bit harder to explain. We get the first glimpse of the bust in the very first episode, already in the Delta Quadrant but before Janeway could know that she herself will be on a long journey home.
If you showed me this image out of the blue, without context, I would have thought it was Archimedes.
This fits with Janeway's backstory as a scientist on a philosophical and technical level. In particular, an oft-quoted anecdote is the story him shouting Eureka! Eureka! on discovering the eponymously named principle of buoyancy.
I believe it's Aristotle.
Notably, Janeway's hero (Da Vinci) states that he looks up to Aristotle
JANEWAY: As a sparrow your mind would be too small? Even with the best of teachers?
DA VINCI: If Aristotle himself were to perch on my branch and lecture till he fell off from exhaustion, still the limits of my mind would prevent me from understanding.